I have a couple of ideas about the balancing and would like to know how the community feels about them:

1) Handcrafting items gives a lot more points than producing them in an assembling machine. It seems to me that this goes against the spirit of factorio (i.e. automating everything)? In my opinion handcrafting should give no points at all, or just give points on net negative crafts.

2) Teching up does not seem to be a viable strategy right now. Late game science would only be worth it in very long games, but most multiplayer PvP probable are <6h. I think a bit of an increase in point rewards for late game items would help to diversify winning strategies.